sboghossian Tier-Aware Gating
Purpose
Louis operates across multiple subscription tiers. Premium features — deep-research, RAG over private corpora, web search, agentic workflows, exports — are available only on paid tiers. The tier-aware gate enforces these boundaries while maintaining a good user experience: explaining clearly what the user is missing, surfacing the upgrade path, and always offering the best possible answer within the current tier's constraints.
The rule is: degrade gracefully, never silently. A user who hits a tier wall should understand exactly what they are missing and how to get it.
Tier Definitions
free
What is included:
- Model inference for short-answer and medium-complexity requests
- Generic legal knowledge questions answered from model training
- Boilerplate drafting (NDA template, standard clause generation) without firm-specific context
- Basic document review without private KB access
What is blocked:
- RAG over private corpus (firm KB or personal document store)
- Deep-research mode (RAG over public legal corpus + web search)
- All calculator tools
- Agentic workflows
- Document exports (PDF/DOCX download)
- Priority response queue
Credit model: limited credits per period (number defined in billing configuration)
starter
What is added over free:
- RAG over personal document store (uploaded documents)
- Light deep-research (RAG over public legal corpus; no web search)
- Basic calculator tools (EOSG, notice period)
- Document export (limited formats)
pro
What is added over starter:
- Full RAG (firm KB + public legal corpus + personal)
- Full deep-research (RAG + web search)
- All calculator tools (interest, stamp duty, statutory deadlines)
- Document export (all formats)
- Multi-turn conversation memory
- Priority response queue
business
What is added over pro:
- eFirm features: matter management, billing integration, team collaboration
- Shared firm knowledge base (shared across all team users)
- Connector integrations (Linear, HubSpot, Stripe)
- Team-level usage analytics
- Matter-scoped conversations
enterprise
What is added over business:
- SSO (Single Sign-On) integration
- Full audit log (who asked what, when)
- On-premises or private-cloud deployment option
- Dedicated support SLA
- Custom knowledge base onboarding
- API access with SLA-backed response times
Behavior Rules
Rule 1 — Never Silently Refuse
If a user on a lower tier requests a feature that is not available:
- Do NOT silently return a lower-quality answer (e.g., answer a deep-research question with a generic model answer without telling the user they are not getting the full depth)
- DO explain what is happening and why
Rule 2 — Inline Upgrade CTA (Contextual)
When a tier wall is hit, surface a one-line upgrade call-to-action at the end of the response. Keep it contextual — tell the user what they would get if they upgraded.
Example: "To access our public legal corpus with 6.3M laws across 50+ jurisdictions for this research, upgrade to Pro. [Upgrade now →]"
Do not repeat the CTA in subsequent turns of the same conversation unless the user explicitly asks about pricing or features.
Rule 3 — Credit Warnings
- At < 20% of remaining credits: append a one-line warning at the end of each response: "You have [X]% of your monthly credits remaining. [Manage credits →]"
- At 0 credits: hard refusal with a single CTA. Do not generate any substantive output — the credit system must be respected.
- At 0 credits, do NOT degrade silently to a free-tier answer — the user has used their allocation; they should top up or wait for renewal.
Rule 4 — Features Available Within Tier
Before executing any tool call, check whether the tool is available at the current tier:
free: [model-inference]
starter: [model-inference, rag-personal, calc-basic]
pro: [model-inference, rag-personal, rag-firm, rag-public, web-search, calc-all, export]
business: [all-pro, efirm-matter, efirm-billing, connectors]
enterprise: [all-business, sso, audit-log, on-prem-option, api-sla]
Rule 5 — No Partial Tool Execution
Do not execute a tool call that will return a billing error mid-stream. Check tier + credits before invoking any tool; if blocked, surface the message before starting.
Output to Downstream
{
"tier": "free|starter|pro|business|enterprise",
"credits_remaining": <integer or null if unlimited>,
"credits_warning": true/false,
"features_available": ["<tool-id>", ...],
"features_blocked": ["<tool-id>", ...],
"upgrade_cta": "<null or one-line upgrade message>"
}
Related Skills
- [[router-tool-selector]]
- [[router-complexity-grader]]
- [[router-persona-selector]]
- [[router-intent-detection]]